Heading into their final match of the season against Fitch, a larger and very talented team, the Stonington High School boys tennis team sat at 11-3 with co-ownership of the ECC Small Division title. For avid followers of the program this success is no surprise, and certainly to the players and their coach they were right where they wanted to be heading into the ECC tournament, slated to start May 29.
Looking at their roster before the season began, an outsider would probably have given them little chance to succeed in what is an extremely competitive conference and division. Manny MacDonald, who entered his sixth season as the SHS boys’ tennis head coach this year, explained.
“I think the major challenge coming into this year was the fact that we lost a wealth of talent last year in a number of seniors, including our number one player in Nick Mazzarese, who was the state champion,” MacDonald said. “Throughout the course of the season we ended up playing at least five freshmen and two sophomores, so having these young kids who have a ton of talent but lack on the match experience was a challenge...just to get them adjusted to playing more competitively against kids from other schools who were usually older.”
MacDonald, who is also the assistant athletics director at SHS, lost most of his varsity players to graduation,and came into the season knowing he had three returning seniors—beyond that everything was up in the air.
Refusing to dub the season a “rebuilding year” and recognizing the raw talent of his incoming freshmen, MacDonald took his returning sophomores and seniors and pieced together what he and the team felt would be a competitive team with three seniors, two sophomores, and four freshmen forming the varsity squad.
“It was kind of a gift,” MacDonald said of his incoming freshman talent. “You know that big senior class left where I had, you know, a lot of all ECC competitors, I graduated four out of my five singles players and one of my top doubles players. But then I have four or five freshmen in this year that can really play, so it was really a gift having that young group come in at that time.”
Along with acclimating the freshmen and sophomores to playing at the top level, MacDonald also had to start from scratch in teaching the doubles game to many of his younger players as tennis lessons before the high school level only focus on singles play. Even given these challenges, the team, anchored by No. 1 singles player, senior Ross Wilkie (8-4), and No. 1 doubles team, freshmen Ben Mazzarese and Daniel Banker (11-2), breezed through their first three matches, 5-2, 7-0, and 7-0, confirming their high expectations.
In the fourth match, the team came upon some tough competition in the form of veteran St. Bernard. Stonington lost the hard-fought match 3-4, and took a back seat in the race to win the ECC Small Division title. The loss however, as MacDonald explained, was the turning point for most of the young players and for the team as a whole, motivating them to work harder and get better.
“No one really hung their head,” MacDonald said. “Everyone had that underlying understanding that, ‘Hey, you know, we just got knocked down a peg. We’re going to have to work hard to get better because there are teams out there that are going to beat us if we don’t prepare and come forth with our best effort.’”
Coming out of the loss, Stonington strung together two four-game winning streaks, defeating every other ECC Small Division foe, including a rematch against St. Bernard and losing only to two larger division rivals on their way to an 11-3 record with one game remaining. For MacDonald and his team, their sudden success was all part of their original goal heading into the season.
“The kids did have some lofty expectations for the season I think, just knowing that they were coming into a program that has had so much success over the past four years.” MacDonald explained. “I think they were looking to share in that success and then when we had that first loss it not so much humbled them, because they weren’t cocky, but it kind of let them know that they were going to have to work a little harder to achieve the goal they had set their sights on…We ended up sharing the division [title], so it’s nice...Being able to win that fifth conference title in a row was a big goal for the team and the young kids really pulled through and they developed well throughout the season.”
While this year’s Stonington squad might not be among the ranks of the larger division powerhouses like East Lyme and Waterford, both with only one loss, the squad has already qualified for the state tournament and is poised to make some noise in the ECC tournament, an individual competition, and sees Wilkie, Mazzarese, and Banker enter as the No. 5 seeds in singles and doubles, respectively.
MacDonald described just how different tournament play is, considering all the players competing are the best of the best on their teams and in the conference.
“Up at the top positions, the one singles or the two singles, it’s really a grind,” MacDonald explained. “A lot of times the lower singles players are more concentrated on keeping the ball in play and waiting to see who makes the first mistake. Where up at the top it’s really a mental grind—you’ve got to really string your points together and figure out what your opponent’s weaknesses are and then if you make some mistakes you have to be mentally tough, you have to recover from those.”
The gutter is certainly not where many of MacDonald’s players generally find themselves, as he has amassed four straight 15-win seasons from 2004 to 2007 (15-1, 15-1, 15-1, 15-2), five straight ECC Small Division titles from 2004 to 2008, and coached a doubles ECC tournament winner in 2006 and a state champion in Nick Mazzarese in 2007. With this season being his biggest challenge in his six seasons as head coach, MacDonald said he has felt more pride in his team this year than in any other.
“Honestly, given all the former success...I would say this season has been my most successful season so far...just given where we started and where we finished and how much all the young players developed.”
It is that development and youth in particular that spell success for the future of the team, especially given the valuable experience gained by the freshmen starting on the varsity level. With the regular season over and the promise of a young, veteran team returning next season, MacDonald only sees Stonington boys’ tennis continuing to carry on the winning tradition.
“The people are already in place for next year. I kind of have an idea of where people are going to play. We’ll see who comes in as freshmen, but I think they have an idea of what they need to do now and the expectations for themselves are going to be high, let alone mine. We want to continue our string of ECC Small Division titles, but we also want to get up there with East Lyme and Waterford and be one of the premiere teams again in the ECC.”